Dragon Ball FighterZ (PS4): It's FighterZ, Not Fighter-Zee. Also, Holy SHIT.

If I can get all anime hipster for a second? Dragon Ball Z fans can go SCREW. I had to wake up at 5am on a sunday mornings so I could watch the original Dragon Ball series and Dragon Ball Z. I WAS COMMITTED YOU LAZY PRICKS. Unfortunately for me I started to lose steam on the series not long after it got its big push on Toonami in the late 90's when the series really started to build a head of steam. Sorry, when the Namek saga ran like 400 episodes, I decided that was enough time I could devote to it. I pretty much lived devoid of Dragon Ball since.

But you know what I love? Fighting games created by Arc Systems. Specifically the Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and the Persona Arena series. I know people live and die by Street Fighter but the speed and intensity of Arc Systems just always feel so much better to me. So when one E3 showed off an over the top Arc Systems variant to Marvel vs Capcom I literally started salivating at the pairing with this anime series. It was a natural fit, and so started months upon months of chomping at the bit for.....

DRAGON BALL FIGTHERZ (PS4)

So I am super out of date on my Dragon Ball timeline so I'll explain the story as best I can. Sometime after/during the events of Dragon Ball Super the world has basically become overrun with with clones of the Z warriors and some of their notable villains. The problem is most of the Z warriors have gone missing, so Bulma goes to find Goku to try to take the fight to the clones and stop this invasion.

The problem is, Goku isn't actually Goku. Oh sure, he's still him but he has been severely depowered. There are a series of waves being pulsed out that are weakening everyone, and the only way to counteract it is link with a separate soul. A separate soul that happens to be currently controlling Goku. The soul is actually you as the player, so the characters are talking directly to you. While its not ideal, it does allow Goku to fight back against the clones. So first things first: Go find the other Z warriors, then once assembled go find the source of the waves and put a stop to this attack.

This story glosses over a lot, because they actually do something pretty interesting with the story. There are essentially 3 story mode arcs for you to play through: A heroes arc, a villains arc, and an Androids arc. The story basically functions the same way among all three modes: you get placed on a map with set enemies to fight. As you play through, you unlock story events depending on the team you are using. You also have set story events based on the boss of that set map, or characters you rescue. On top of this the more you use characters, the more they will interact with you to give them more of their inner monologue about the situation.

Although they use the term Arc, that isn't actually accurate because each Arc doesn't continue off of the last one. The levels you've earned remain, but instead of the story continuing you actually are playing an alternate timeline situation. Basically how things would have happened if you controlled the different set of characters and how that might have changed things.

It's only after you complete all three Arcs you receive the final true ending of the game and unlock FighterZ only original character: Android 21. She is basically a combination of one of the android characters and a Buu style character. And SHE, IS, DELIGHTFUL. Something about her voice and the almost innocent evil she exudes when threatening characters. She's tricky to use but an absolute joy and god do I hope she becomes canon to the series.

I. LOVE. HER.

God I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. So as I mentioned before, FighterZ comes from the minds over at Arc Systems. When I saw the initial trailer of the game, it really looked like Arc was trying to doing their own take on the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3-vs-3 series using Dragon Ball as the setting, and I will be damned if that's pretty much exactly what I got. But what they really wanted to emphasize was a much less complicated barrier to entry, which has been a long standing complaint to those new to the Guilty Gear or BlazBlue franchise.

It operates on a pretty standard fighting game control scheme with light, medium, heavy attack, and a ki blast mapped to the 4 buttons. Your right shoulder buttons allow for two forms of rush called your Hyper dash (which allows you to fly across the screen to start or pursue a combo) and your Meteor rush (which is essentially a guard breaking combo launcher). Lastly your left shoulder buttons are mapped to your tag partners for quick assists to extend combos, or tagging them to take your current fighters place.

Whole lotta Goku Black in high level FighterZ play.

There are lots of little mechanics that blend these various games together as well. Like Marvel vs Capcom, characters that are tagged out will slowly recover some of their lost health. They appeared to fuse the Guilty Gear Burst effect with MVC's X-factor called the Sparking Blast, which will knock back your enemies and give you a temporary increase to power and health recovery for one last ditch effort to keep fighting,which increases the fewer teammates you have left. You are able to use your meteor rush to break a guard and force opponents to tag out and so forth.

There are also a lot of little mechanics in this game to make it easier to play. For example, in using just the light attack button you can automatically string together a short combo that will launch, follow, and complete with a slam back down. Persona 4 Arena (another Arc fighter) did something similar to this. If using the medium attack button you will string a stronger combo that ends with a flashy special move. Every character has a universal anti-air by hitting down and heavy. And generally, all of the special moves are pretty simplified as well as the majority of every character's move set can be done with the standard Hadoken motion (quarter circle, 2-3-6/2-1-4, d-dr-r or whatever scheme you subscribe to).

Then you have a bunch of little mechanics unique to the game. On top of the Sparking Blast, you can tap two buttons to instantly teleport behind an enemy for a heavy kick to close the gap quickly, or use to keep a combo airborne. When completing auto-combos or combos over 10 hits, you basically earn dragon balls. If you collect all 7, the player that hits an autocombo with a fully charged gauge can be granted a wish such as revive teammate, recover health, more power, etc.

In the story mode, there is also an additional stat boosting mechanic where you can give your characters various attribute changes to accommodate for the increasing difficulty of the enemies, but it won't be until your second playthrough or so where the enemy levels will force you to be very strategic about what attributes you need to give yourself. I basically would ride with increased experience and post match recovery to hang with teams I wanted to level longer.

Now, despite what the fighting game community and game developers would have me to believe, having just an online VS mode does not push me to buy a game. Street Fighter V tried to get away with this garbage, and that's why that game eats shit. So I will be holding it up on its single player experience because other people suck and I am not good enough to have an enjoyable match with the frothing, quick twitch, rage quitting jerks who pollute online fighters.

In crazier moments, it really does just become an episode of DBZ

So as I stated before the game has a Story mode, which is fine but after you complete it there is little reason to keep playing it other than increasing difficulty and stat customization. It has an arcade mode which has an interesting scaling mechanic for the difficulty, so if you are blowing the the first matches too easily you will be scaled upwards to increasingly more difficult matches. If you lose or have a hard time, you keep level or move back down. It makes getting an S-rank run in arcade a bit more tougher than it appears. There is also an 2nd tier of difficulty which increases all of the matches.  This is the mode I most frequently play.

There is a pretty comprehensive tutorial on how to play the game, and the first run of the story mode is going to basically be vomiting tutorial at you for a significant portion of the story. It got to the point where I realized like some 4 hours into the game I was still getting tutorial, but the story was actually really good so it wasn't bothering me like it normally would have. The training mode also has a combo trainer, which was not actually as difficult to go through as some of these combo trainers usually are in these games. Usually with like Street Fighter or Tekken I would get about halfway through and be like "fuck it, I can't get this frame perfect timing."

FighterZ also as a recording replay feature that I have never used, mainly because I am not impressive with this game. This is mainly used to supplement the multitude of online modes the game features. Once you are placed in a lobby for multiplayer, you can open a ring to fight other people present in the lobby (up to 8 people), or wait in line for your turn to go at someone. You have have two matches going at a time but for some strange reason, people waiting don't get to spectate the match. I have no idea why they would do this since being able to watch would keep people in the ring.

There is also an Arena battle mode, which also features the lobby you play in but I don't think there is a player restriction on this one. I actually haven't played an arena battle. There is also the World Stage mode, which is where you can queue up to Ranked and Unranked matches worldwide. Whats nice about this is your queue can hold if you are playing the arcade, training, or story modes. There is an offline vs mode as well for local play.

This is seriously some GO1 (go-ichi) level defense.

Everything about this game is pretty fuckin' great because its basically aping off of the incredibly solid Guilty Gear Xrd iterations in the unreal engine: using 3d models shaped in a way to give it a 2d look which allows for interesting camera tricks and dramatic angles. Animations are high intensity, fast, and fluid as every good fighting game should be. It translates well to the story mode cut-scenes as well and is simply gorgeous.

Surprisingly to me, Guilty Gear luminary Daisuke Ishiwatari outside of a little casual advice thrown in, had practically nothing to do with the production of the game despite it using a similar engine. And like many of the other Arc System fighting games, I would have thought he did the soundtrack because it has that same high energy rock his games are known for. Hell the FighterZ is basically a copy of what they did in Guilty Gear Xrd.

It even shows a lot of appreciation to the source material, as every characters moves and specials are faithfully recreated in the game so they look like they fight the same way they did in your favorite episodes. Even more so, if you use the right characters in the right stage settings, you can trigger cinematics that re-create some of the more famous moments of the show (such as beating Frieza with Goku on Destroyed Namek).

Yamcha is one of the few who got an original Dramatic Finish. Finishing
his fight with Nappa LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

But if I did have to criticize some things, I would say the online play is a chore to set up and there is not a lot of punishment for rage quitters. I feel the game has some serious balancing issues because the casual players basically spam the hyperdash relentlessly because there is little way to punish it after it connects. Usually everyone universal anti-air will counter it but you still have to time it right and that's not exactly easy to do. So unless you get that trick down, expect to have that dash in your face a lot.

And since this is in that MvC kinda vein, combos can get long and stretched out. This game rewards offense more than defense (despite the best in the world right now being a primarily defensive player). So once you are tagged with a combo you are basically relegated to stay in it until the opponent drops it or finishes it. I don't know why the Sparking Blast in this game couldn't count as one free combo break like Guilty Gear's Burst does. That'd be a small concession to give a player one free fighting chance. So any time you think are you are ready to tackle some online play, please be warned that you are probably not.

One of the easiest jokes in the series.

Lastly my ongoing crusade against the DLC. I've clearly lost this battle. There is a 35 dollar "Fighter Pass" that was released with the game with a schedule of no less than 8 DLC characters to come out by the end of the summer. And at this point I just said "Fuck it, fine. Here." and paid for the thing when the first 2 additional characters came out. I've lost. Retail games aren't 60 dollars anymore. They are 90 going on infinity because we as gamers needed to say as a whole "We aren't going to let you nickle and dime every aspect of the game." and we didn't. We let the EA, Biowares, and Capcoms of the world win and get away with this, and now its just something that is accepted. This blows. Fuck DLC.

But complaints not withstanding, Dragon Ball: FighterZ after a somewhat rocky beta basically fucking nailed it on this one.  I don't know if this has supplanted Guilty Gear as my favorite fighting game series but I really feel it is making a hell of a case for it. I play this game constantly and have been practicing to play it in my first EVO championship trip. It's hands down one of the best fighting games in the market right now and its easy to see why its already so immensely popular. It's fast paced and frenetic, easy to pick up but skillful. And if that's what you look for in a fighter you can't go wrong with Dragon Ball: FighterZ.

The first nerfs came out, too
Arc dared to disappoint Vegeta.

Guilty Gear Xrd (PS3/4) : A Glimpse of Things to Come.

Almost every single gamer has that one genre of games that they love, but try as they might they will never truly be great at them. Some folks love Call of Duty multiplayer but never really crack the top of the leader boards through all their effort. Some people love a good puzzle game, but struggle to really reach the later stages when the speed picks up.

For me, its fighting games. I can certainly learn enough to be competent, but never enough to be competitive. There is one series though that has always stood tall for me, and for whatever reason, one I seem to excel in more than say Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat. A series that at first, I didn't even like. It just didn't grab me. But two co-workers at the ole DerpStop started playing it, and I'll be damned if they are going to be better than me in a fighting game... Thus began my harrowing addiction to series, which after years finally continues in....

GUILTY GEAR XRD -SIGN-

Guilty Gear as a series actually tends to have an incredibly long and complicated story line spanning over the course of the games. In this edition, it takes place after the events of Guilty Gear 2: Overture (a game I have heard that is 2 scoops of terrible). Descending from seemingly the heavens, a tan skinned girl by the name of Ramlethal Valentine declares war against the entirety of the world.

Since she appears to be telling the truth and does appear to be a Valentine, the world takes notice and makes their movements against her. Enter long time series protagonist Sol Badguy. He is currently traveling with Sin Kiske when is contacted by Sin's father, Ky Kiske. Sol is asked to investigate the situation, but a mercenary he obviously demands a pretty penny for it around the range of a million "world dollars."

Meanwhile, as is with most Guilty Gear games, all of the characters also have their own substories loosely connected to the main plot. Characters like Millia, Venom, and Slayer are still dealing with the doings of the assassin's guild, May still fauns over the Jellyfish Pirate captain Johnny and her struggles with being one of the few surviving Japanese, and Potemkin still on his never ending journey to suck butts. (like, all of the butts).

Ramlethal Valentine.

Guilty Gear Xrd this time around did something very, very different regarding their story. Typically, in their story mode you play as you would sort of like arcade mode, but with more dialog, but depending on how you completed the fights, it would send you down various story paths which would allow your character get multiple endings. Naturally, not every single one of these would end up being canon to the story.

This time around the arcade mode functions as the main story sort of, at least in the context of the character you've chosen. You get a cutscene explaining what they are doing when Ramlethal makes her declaration of war and then it follows the classic Tekken or Street fighter Alpha style of storytelling. You fight till about midway till you are treated with a cutscene, you fight till the final boss where you get one more cutscene, and then an ending when you win. Most of them end open-endedly.

The reason for this is because then you are to go to the actual story mode. This needs a different name. Because while yes, it does continue the story from the arcade mode, there is no game play to it. None, at all. It is akin to getting to watch a Guilty Gear animated film of the events that take place after arcade mode for about 2-4 hours depending on how fast you read. Its well animated and fully voice acted, so it is a lot like watching a movie. It very much succeeds at fleshing out the story more. It was an interesting way to do things especially with such a tangled mess like the Guilty Gear is. But in the context of a game, its somewhat limiting. It's basically what Persona 4 Arena did only animated and with no fights.

The only other playable game mode outside of Arcade and Vs mode is the Medal of Millionaire mode. In M.o.M mode, it essentially used to be a survival mode, but now you sort of half this grid system where you pick and unlock your fights, and you have a bit of an RPG element which allows you to level your strengths and buy equipment or attacks for your character. I am not sure what the eventual end game of this mode is aside from an increasing difficulty and loot gathering of sorts. Its a different way to play the game, but having breaks in the action slows the pace down. Honestly more games need to do survival modes like Dead or Alive does them. Just a nonstop rush.

So lets get to the game, shall we? Guilty Gear Xrd is a 2d fighter. Two people stand on each side of each other, and you wail on the other one till their life bar drops to zero. In that regard its a lot like every other fighter. Not a great sell or ground breakingly original I know, but its all the little nuances and differences that make me really fall of this game. For example, almost every fighter has combo chains you can do, but Guilty Gear tends to be a little loose on those and gives you a pretty rapid attack speed. So that means idiotic troglodytes like me can dash in for a few light strikes, followed by a medium, heavy, and end on a special.

As I mentioned just a line ago, there is dashing. I fucking love dashing. Sure, lots of fighting games have a dash but none of them feel so fluid to me like Guilty Gear does. You can dash front and back, you can do it in the air front and back, and the speeds vary depending on the character. So if I use a mainstay like my girl Millia Rage, she moves in and out like a lightning bolt for quick stick and move combos, and is incredibly difficult to pin against a wall. Meanwhile, someone who's a heavy hitter like May or Dumptemkin has a slower more lumbering movement, and it is similarly reflected in their dash move.

Naturally, at the bottom of the screen you have a tension meter. Which builds up as you fight, pursue, or really just stay active during the battle, once it fills up to half or full, you can use one of your really heavy damaging special moves. Each character usually has at least 2, but sometimes 3 of these moves. They tend to vary in type well and they can quickly turn the tide of battle. The tension meter can also be used for various defensive barriers which will allow you defend some of the heavier attacks.

The marriage obsessed Elphelt is a wonderful addition to the roster.
She is absolutely insane, she wants to marry any male she fights.

But the other big purpose of it is the Instant Kills. As you can imagine, they do exactly what you expect them to. They instantly kill your opponent, regardless of when you did it or how much health they have when it happens. You are treated to sharp looking cinematic of the kill before you get "DESTROYED" in huge letters on the screen. Every character including the final boss is susceptible to them. But they are a gamble, by activating the mode that allows you to make and instant kill your tension gauge will slowly deplete. Once empty, it will start to deplete your health next. You can turn it off, but if you take a swing with it and miss, you lose your tension meter for the remainder of the round.

There is also a Burst Gauge by your life bar as well. This is the savior for me in this fighting game, and probably the only thing that keeps me competitive. With the simple press of a few buttons, your character will jump and flash. If the flash connects with an opponent, it completely fills up your tension meter. But more importantly, if you are stuck in the middle of a combo getting wailed on, it will counter it and blast your enemy back.  I cannot tell you how many times this move has saved my ass from constantly getting air juggled or what not, but all these things together basically assemble everything I need and want to make a game exciting.

Some of the instant kills are very, very eff'n cool. 

One of the biggest selling points for me is that Guilty Gear as a series is FAST. And I'm not talking about the Street Fighter 2 Turbo Edition breakneck speed ramped up to unplayable levels. Because of these game mechanics, the naturally flow of the game is incredibly fast pace. Even with some of the slower characters, the right set of moves allows you to keep some heavy pressure up. My aforementioned easy combo that I like to do is a good example of this because it doesn't require me to use specific moves to form a chain. Its a lot more free form, and I honestly like that better.

Something new to me personally though, is while I play this game, I can't get over how visually stunning the game looks. If you look at it at a glance, it will probably look like any other Guilty Gear game that came before it.  It might appear to just be a pretty looking anime fighter with traditional 2d sprites. But that's where you would be wrong.

This game was developed from the ground up on the Unreal Engine. So while everything appears to be 2d anime sprites, the entirety of the game and its cutscenes are done with 3D models carefully designed to give the image of 2d. When you make kills or hit certain moves, the camera will shift around and spin to show you the full 3d image. It looks fantastic and I constantly find myself watching the game and reminding myself that everything is fully rendered. All of the colors and lines are bright and bold, and it just has a fantastic visual style to it.

And then, there is the music. Daisuke Fucking Ishiwatari. He's the main developer behind the game, but he's also the game's composer. If you haven't listened to some of the older Guilty Gear soundtracks then you are missing out. Daisuke is one of the few devs I've seen realize that if you make a game about kicking ass, your music should equally kick ass. And that's what his soundtracks do. They rock, and they rock fucking hard.

The soundtrack Guilty Gear Xrd isn't just a rip or rehash of the old Guilty Gear music although some of it is available. Each character has had new themes written for them in the vein of their previous theme. So when each level starts, you might her a notable scale of notes but then the song will change. This is most noted for characters like Chip and May. Even the main theme "Heavy Day" as goofy as it is in English, as just the right riff to make even the most anti-rock person put on a happy frown and bob their head a little. I could listen to that and "Lily of Steel" all day.

Lily of Steel: Fucking. Rock.

Alright, let me stop gushing like a fangirl for a second here. Despite my salivation over this review, there are some negatives and some of them are pretty big. As mentioned before, Guilty Gear is a pretty long series, and as games that last over time do there is a pretty wide case of characters. So I have to say that I was a little more than disappointing when I saw that Xrd's roster was trimmed down to a scant 17 characters. This is more than the arcade version had, but considering how beefy the series is as a whole for characters, this is a surprisingly low number.

This is also marred by the fact that not all of them are available from go. That's not always uncommon in fighting games, but when you fire the game up, console exclusive Sin Kiske isn't available until you build of 200K of game money. You get 100 of it by just watching the story so i suppose it could be worse but that was disappointing. But what really aggravated me, as you might expect, were the fucking DLC characters. Elphet is a great character, she's funny, and fun to use. But the fact that I had to use a DLC code to unlock her bothers me. She was given away for free for first week, but anyone who didn't get it immediately gets to eat shit on that one.

It's become common practice between me and a friend to scream at each other
about eating cake when we play Elphelt against each other. 

And then after several weeks, the unlocked the final character Leo Whitefang for DLC. Naturally, as much as I hate it I wanted a complete roster so I went to download him, and he was fucking 8 dollars. EIGHT. That means to get the full roster of the game today, you need to at least pay 16 additional dollars on top of the price you paid at the store to complete the roster. I don't care how developers try to spin it, that is absolute bullshit. I hated it in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax with Margaret, and I hate it now.

The other big disaster of Guilty Gear Xrd is the game's network mode. Anyone who plays fighters knows that online mode is the bread and butter of any fighter these days. Xrd had problems with their network right out of the gate. Impossible to connect to matches, matches would drop after you got into them, lag would be game breakingly prevalent. But to make matters worse, the network mode is so clunky and obstructive, I couldn't even get into a single game to start. Make your profile, pick your character, pick your region, pick your continent, pick your state, pick a room, pick a door, pick an arcade machine, pick your favorite color, pick your favorite spice girl, pick your favorite quadrilateral equation.

Too many menus basically chased me out of playing online for a long time. To make matters worse, there doesn't appear to be any real option for inviting a friend to play in the server you are in. It's stupid. It should be: make you profile, pick your region, then ranked or unranked. That's it. Anything more than that is making your system far too complicated and only adds steps to the process that prevent me from playing the game. And newsflash on this one: if people can't play your fighting game online, people aren't going to play your game for long.

Supposedly they have been addressing the issue, because when I finally realized I need to go where there are servers with people on it, I was able to get into a room, then into a group of 8, and got to play a series of matches with relative ease. It had a nifty feature where it keeps a running count of the frame lag, but honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell how that many lost frames would affect the fight. Supposedly 8 frames is huge, and I was around 3 or 4. I managed to play a few rounds with some random and broke even so I guess that's not bad.

I guess MOM mode adds some RPG element to it, but I don't really know
what the end game of it really is. Perhaps a challenge, I dunno. 

And seriously, going back to it? 17 Characters? How do you cut some of the series most popular characters, not to mention characters I love to play?! No Jam, no Dizzy, no Bridget, No Baiken, No Order-Sol, No Testament. I mean sure, new characters are nice but fighters are really made or broken on their diverse roster, and Guilty Gear has always done great with those. This is probably an angle where they will release more on DLC, or come up with a new ridiculously named version which I will buy, because I am a stupid.

Complaints aside though, the bottom line is that I think Guilty Gear is one of the top of the line fighters, and I think given the right audience could make a serious case to dethrone some of the most popular games. It's a technical fighter that does well at not being overly daunting to the new player, its got an amazing new visual style that manages to look clean and new while retaining the charm of the ones that came before it, it's got a soundtrack that rips a new asshole as you rip one into your opponent, and so on. It doesn't go out of the way to break a lot of the molds they've set, but what they do, they do well (for the most part).

Shame so many got cut from the roster. Hopefully we see more soon.

What we have here is what I think will be the ground work for what will be a much better future version of this game. I am a huge fan of Arc System fighting games, and Guilty Gear is naturally their crown jewel. When the XBone announced they were getting Killer Instinct I got very jealous. Guilty Gear Xrd has completely washed that feeling away. It's just a damn good fighter and I've you never played it I strongly suggest you give it a try. I've already seen flash sales knock this game down to 20$ so there is no reason not to.

Honestly, it stuns me that this series isn't more popular. I've heard it referred to as the game StreetFighter players wish Streetfighter would be. I'm hard pressed to disagree with that.

Seriously, You have Dizzy in the story. Put her in the game.
And if Bridget is coming back, remove the gender sway.
That'll piss fans off.

Dead Or Alive 5 (XB360): Unlike project Epsilon, this was not a failure.

The first time I played Dead or Alive was Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore for the PS2. Fairly sure it was the first PS2 game I ever owned, and man did I play the shit out of that one. A fairly simplistic one on one fighter with some interesting characters, fun and fast combat, and tons of costumes to unlock. It also had a story, but good fucking luck trying to make sense of it. Despite it being fully voice acted, even if you played all the stories it didn't really help clear things up.

In any case, I've followed the game gradually as it worked its way from console to console. Despite the addition of new characters in each game, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of innovation to the franchise. Some of the story got even more muddled from what little they gave you, and it has some bizarre spin offs where you play beach volleyball and oogle the characters boobies. That being said, I still love it as a fighting game so I picked up the new one after the holiday to see how it holds up.

DEAD OR ALIVE 5: (XB360)

As I fired the game up, I immediately took note that not much seemed to change right out the gate. I was able to fire it up and jump right into the arcade mode and basically it felt like all the other installments of the game. First thing I really want to make note of in this review, is that the graphics in this game have been immensely improved from the previous installments. All of the characters have have lost kind of the animeish looking eyes that they used to have to favor a more realistic and human looking facial features. I actually really liked the change. 

Although, the ladies in this game still move around like they stuffed a pair of water balloons down their shirts and they are standing on the deck of a boat in the storm. The devs actually wanted to tone down the jiggle physics in the game to try to give it a more realistic an serious bent, but the fans pissed and cried about it till they changed it back (something I will now refer to as "Mass Effecting" the game and devs).

I would like to give a  massive thank you to the people at Tecmo for adjusting the difficulty a bit in this one. Dead or Alive 4's was downright murderous on pretty much any difficulty setting you chose. Now at least in this game you have some options. 

For all the major play modes outside of story mode, they are broken up into courses ranging from Rookie to Legend. With each step up in rank, so does the difficulty and in the case of the survival mode so does the number of people to fight.

Thank you to DOA5 for bringing that back, by the way. In one on one fighters if you don't play games online like I do, then you will find yourself getting bored sooner than later when you complete the story. Survival mode should be a standard that is in on every one on one fighter. It should be executed like DOA5 does it where as soon as you beat an enemy, the next one jumps in immediately  No load times, no screen transition, the action just keeps moving. 

All of the other modes are fairly unremarkable. Arcade mode, which is just 8 fights in a row 2 rounds.  Time attack mode: which is the same as arcade but it keeps your total play time. Both of which of those modes you can play single or tag team. And the aforementioned survival mode. There is also a spectator mode where you can watch too computer players go at it as well while you take pictures. But lets face it, people use this mode to get upskirt shots or freeze them in peculiar positions, such as Kasumi's face straddling throws. 

The actual combat of the game hasn't changed much since DOA2: Hardcore but they have polished and sharpened things up. The game is ideal because any button masher can pick the game up and start wailing away on people, but every character has a massive repertoire of moves that you can run through in training mode. So there can be a lot of technically pleasings ways to play as well. I'm a big fan of using Helena because her combos switch from low to high constantly and they are tricky to counter.

As the new girl, Mila's move set is kinda a limited compared to everyone else
But god damn is she fun to use. 

Speaking of which, the countering system is probably the most polished its ever been. In DOA2  you could pretty much hit back and hold and it would reverse pretty much any move the enemy threw at you. Fun against the computer but in 2 player it just resulted with two players constantly grabbing at air. 

Now their "Rock, Paper, Scissors" system of combat actually as some substantial balance to it. You can actually fling some punches or kicks because the countering system requires more precision to execute, namely by hitting a direction to correspond to high, med, and low attacks. They had this in DOA4 but it always felt more like a roll of the dice. I feel like I have better control here.

It's roster is bigger than its ever been. With pretty much all of the 17 main characters returning for the 5th installment, it introduces 2 new characters in Mila: the foxy MMA style fighter and Rig: who uses Taekwondo. Both of them bring in fighting styles not previously in the game, which make them both fun alternatives to the already extensive cast.

Also, this edition of Dead or Alive marks another first as it started to cross over with competing fighting game Virtua Fighter as some of that series established veterans in Sarah, Akira, and Pai Chan make an appearance. I haven't unlocked Pai yet but Sarah and Akira both fit in seamlessly. It had been a while since I last played a Virtua Fighter but it took little time to re-acclimate to using Sarah. Where is Jacky though?

This is kind of a nit picky thing to keep complaining about, but seriously? Fuck downloadable content. I'm really getting tired of pissing and moaning about this but it makes me angry each time. One of my favorite reasons for playing DOA2: Hardcore was all the of the cool and different costumes you can unlock by continually playing your favorite characters. Some of the girls have upwards 6 or 7 different costumes a piece. That to me is awesome, fun to do, and gives me a reason to keep playing the game.

And while DOA5 boasts a pretty sizable number of costumes, a lot of the nifty and fun cosplay types aren't in there. Why? because you have to pay extra for them in DLC. Doing the math? To get all the extra costumes for the game you have to pay upwards 5000 or more Microsoft points, which is like an additional 50 bucks. I'm sorry, but that's absolute bullshit. Costumes for characters shouldn't be anything more than 50 cents tops.  

Make DLC have sizable and significant changes to the game. I will download the free ones you have offered (and I might bite on the maid pack since I dig that look, {Don't judge me}) you can go fuck yourself with your stupid downloadable content. 

I uh... Yep, totally playing this game for the fighting. Yep...
Credible game journalist.. that's me. 

Now, you'll notice that I didn't start this review going into the story line like I usually do. There are two reasons why I did it this way. One, the story in this game is so muddled up and complex that I can't really find a way to narrow it to one paragraph. And two, it's because I wanted to save this for last because this is the area of the game where DOA5 has made some DRASTIC improvement. 

Usually in fighting games, the story mode usually consists of some small prologue when you start then you play the game via arcade mode. Occasionally you'll get a cut scene mid game and then an ending after you beat the last boss. I would say the Tekken Series and the Street Fighter Alpha series probably perfected this style. For this genre of game, it worked for the most part. But if you really wanted the whole "story" of this type of game, you'd really need to play through it with every character. For some of these games, that's pretty daunting. 

Persona 4 Arena did an interesting try with the story where it functioned a lot like its RPG roots where you had a lot of character interaction and story telling between the fight sequences  I'll admit it did a great job in telling a story, but there was WAY too much of it for the amount of fighting you do. Ended much too quickly and it could get boring. 

Dead or Alive 5 has shaken up this formula. Since many of the characters in the DOA universe are connected you don't get to select a character and jump right in. The game sets you on a timeline, and shows you many animated fully voice acted cut scenes that pick up after the end of 4. It gives the story some real meat to it, and none of the cut scenes run on so long that it gets too excessive between the fights. At least not like Persona 4 Arena did. 

The timeline jumps from character to character and you play about 3 fights with each of them. Some of them are looking to win the DOA tournament, some are looking to hone their fighting abilities, but the real linchpin of the story focuses on the ninja characters and their battles against DOATEC. 

When using characters not tied to the main story, the pacing can get light  hearted
 or downright silly, but it doesn't really affect the overall story too badly

To give a brief summary, Helena tried to destroy DOATEC for their work with weapons at the end of 4 before she was rescued by Zack (who still sucks). Two years later she has assumed control of the company and is trying to right its goals to more peaceful aspirations and has partnered up with Kasumi on her hunt for the clones of her(Kasumi) created by DOATEC to be sold as elite ninja weapons. Hayate, Ayane, and Ryu Hayabusa continue their hunt for Kasumi for abandoning the clan, although there appears to be a desire amongst them and Helena to see this misunderstanding come to close so Kasumi may return home.

Some of the cut scenes can drag on. If you watch the youtube of all them cut together (see below if you don't wanna get the game), its the length of a full feature film. That being said, this is probably the best story telling that this franchise has ever done. Now the dialog between the characters actually makes sense because I am getting the exposition to explain what the fuck is actually going on. I still don't know what project epsilon is or why it was a failure, but at least I have a better idea than I did in DOA2: Hardcore.

But with such a intricate story line focused on the ninja chracters, I have to wonder why they never tried to do a Ninja Gaiden spin off featuring the DOA characters? A fast paced hack and slasher where you jump from the perspectives of Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate, and other DOA characters? I would totally play that, if it was based of Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 of course. Never 3. 

Fuck this got wordier than I wanted it too. Alright, to wrap this up I can acknowledge that this game will never be seen on the same tier of fighters than say Street Fighter, Tekken, or even Soul Calibur. But this is a franchise that I've always had a soft spot for, and this installment has done a lot to work out many of the problems I had with the franchise. 

If you are new to the series, or a seasoned veteran you can take my opinion for what its worth. Dead or Alive 5 is a fast, fun to play fighter with tightened, simple controls and a massive story and graphic overhaul. This installment is easily the best in the series. It will be hard for the next installment to top this one. 

Streetfighter X Tekken (PS3/XB360): Frustratingly Satisfying.

There was a bowling alley called Vine Lanes that used to be by my house when I was real little. My dad and I would go bowl and have a good time, but in between turns I would run up to the arcade machines to watch people play what would be my introduction to the Fighting Game genre in a game called Street Fighter 2. I just fell in love with the game. I thought the characters were great and it had a green monster who got covered in lightning, why wouldnt I love it? The game was awesome, and it would be a long time till I got an SNES to actually play it myself at home. Flash forward to high school and I come into the lunch room to see that they set up a Tekken 3 machine. I have dabbled with the Tekken franchise a little bit, but a group of 5 of us would fiercely do battle on that machine. Forced me to run out and buy the game and start practicing up. Between these two games I often wondered what a game would be like if these franchises squared off.  For more than 15 years that never seemed to happen, the Street Fighter franchise only ever wanted to tango with other 2d fighters. But on fateful comic-con teased a tag battle with Ryu and Chun-Li vs. Kazyua and Nina. I checked every day to reserve my copy and finally after this long wait, I get to sit down with.....

STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN:(PS3)

A meteorite made big headlines in the news as it became one of the first interstellar debris to hit the planet earth within last 400 years. It was estimated to burn up in the atmosphere in the planet fall and to do no damage to the environment. But when it struck in Antarctica, all the government found was a peculiar looking box in its place. They couldn't figure out how to open it or what its purpose was, all they knew is that it reacted to conflict around it, releasing a liquid of some type that caused a massive increase of power. Because this box seemed to cause conflict and fighting among the scientists there, they named the box Pandora. The two major entities, Shadowloo and the Mishima Zaibatsu, both realized the potential for such power and both decide that they want Pandora for themselves. In addition to these two groups, both universes characters all have individual motivations for acquiring Pandora for themselves as well.

Right, because Kazuya needed to be more of a bad ass.

Street Fighter x Tekken is the merged brain child of the Capcom's and Namco's major franchises. While the game has a strong resemblance to Street Fighter 4 most notably in its design, SFxT does a wonderful job meshing aspects of the two games together into one.  The rules in its actual game play rule structure is closer to Tekken Tag Tournament: each player makes a team of two characters and the first player to lose one of them loses the round. There are buttons and combos to allow you to tag out mid combo or at a cold stance, and the character who is currently resting will recover a portion of their health back, much like how it works in the Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Matches like most fighting games can be best of 1, 3 or 5 rounds. It also features a scramble mode where all 4 players are on the screen at the same time for just sheer mayhem.  SFxT controls will definietly feel more at home to the avid Street Fighter player, as it uses the same three strength punch and kick system they are used to.

Heavy Punch: Because sometimes a bitch doesn't get the message with a Light one.

Because of this the controls definitely have a more Street Fighter feel to it and team SF moves are generally unchanged and familiar (except you can't mash Chun-li's lightning kick anymore), team Tekken's move sets have been pretty overhauled. Some of the motions still feel familiar but there definitely has been a SF transition to them. I was alright at Tekken but jumping into this game with characters I was very familiar with like Lili, Julia, and Xiaoyu I would find myself getting whipped around until I actually studied the move sets. Many of the Tekken characters incorporate some kind of sidestep/dash move that allows them to pass through fireballs, but I still end up getting whacked when I try to use them. The game also borrows some of Tekken's recoveries when you hit the ground, giving you a chance for temporary invulnerability to get up quick or roll out of a corner after you hit the ground. There are some new mechanics too, like using the Pandora. Basically what this does is if your partner's life drops to less than 25% you can activate Pandora and bring out a pretty bitch'n looking evil version of your partner. You get a full super gauge and a massive boost to power, but you only have a small amount of time to finish off your opponent because if you don't your character loses. It looks cool as hell but it's never saved me from a fight. There is also a gem system that you can customize for each character. Adding gems will allow power, speed, defense or gauge boosts that trigger under certain conditions to help win fights. I haven't played with them much myself because I'm more concerned with learning the moves.

There are a few things about this game that piss me off though. Again to make things more comfortable for Tekken players, you are able to wall and ground bounce your opponents to string together your combos. This infuriates me to death, because if you ever have to play one of "Those Guys" like Ive talked about before, you are going to get combo'd up and then your character will never hit the ground. Its happened to me dozens of times already and it makes me so fucking mad I have to walk away from the game before I'd smash my tv. This of course brings me to my other problem. Combo's have incredibly tight window, and the average gamer like myself will probably find themselves able to get through about half of the combo trials. Often I've found myself losing my shit because I can't chain together a LP + LP + Roll forward MP combo because it doesn't think I've timed my LPs right. And there is no option to see the combo performed so I can't even figure the timing out. Perhaps this is done to discourage the button masher, but I do feel it makes the game very difficult for those who don't play a lot of fighters. I've played a lot of Tekken and Street Fighter 4 and my very first play through the game on medium, My team of Lili and Asuka was getting relentlessly destroyed by the computer in the last 4 match ups of arcade mode. It wasn't till I started spamming a sweep combo Asuka has that I was able to muscle my way to the finish. On a side note: When playing the computer? Balrog is the worst match-up ever. He will fucking predict any move you make. It automatically goes to hardest difficulty.

I am really happy with the character selection for the most part. Both sides took a group of the games most popular and notable faces. The Tekken side specifically has a very good mix of very different styled characters and a lot of my favorites made the cut (Lili, Xiaoyu, Kazuya, Julia, Hworwang) and the Street Fighter side thankfully didn't over load on the shotoken fighters. I was kinda bummed to not see Sakura in the game or the return of Karin, but I suppose that's a small price to pay to not have to deal with prick's who like spam kick with Eddy Gordo or Christie. Or any of the doofus characters like Dan (Dan is the fucking worst, get over it). The SF side is basically filled with the mainstays you know and love, with some new and returning faces such as Poison or Rolento. There may be some minor balance issues (everyone online plays Rolento and Ken)  but otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the characters turned out.

Poison has a very interesting background. Definitely a great addition to the franchise.

I do have some issues with the characters through. First off? Why the fuck does Cole McGrath not get a storyline? You guys went and got the voice actor who played him in the game, why the hell not give him a story line so he's not just grunting? I felt cheated. But not as cheated as I felt when eagerly took the game home to find out that Fat Dopey Mega Man / Pac-Man were locked out? Why the hell were they locked out? You guys promoted that they would be in the game and even caused a bit of controversy because of it. why did I have to arbitrarily wait two weeks for the stupid unlock code? They were already "exclusives" that were free for me. I cant think of any reason for it. And lastly, the DLC controversy.. I don't want to get too in deep with this rant because I've already done it before, but the fact that Capcom got caught with their pants down with fully playable DLC on the disc and cut a bullshit excuse about it saving space and not being an obvious cash grab is just infuriating. They refuse to show loyalty to their rabid fan base, and that's pretty insulting. Everyone knows the characters are in there and their gonna have the nerve to charge more for them. It would have been a nice act of goodwill to just own up to it and say, "OK,  you got us. Were sorry about that. Here, we are giving out the unlock codes for free." Pffft. Fat chance.

Seriously, Why didn't Cole get a storyline? You suck, Crapcom.

Through all my complaining though, this game is everything that I wanted it to be. Just a wonderful mix of two cast of characters that I've been fantasizing a cross over for well over 15 years at this point. They actually implemented a story so its fun to play single player and the multiplayer is everything that it should be. The controls seem to be very natural to the average player but also seems right at home for the hardcore "that guy" gamers as well.  It makes me very excited to see how the upcoming Tekken X Street Fighter will play out with the SF characters on a 3D plane and possible the removal of their projectile attacks. If you are fan of the 2D fighters I see absolutely no reason why this game shouldn't part of your collection.

Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 (XB360/PS3): Hi, We're Capcom. We Love your Money.

Aside from perhaps Killer Instinct, a fighting game I have always been pretty proud about being good in was Marvel vs Capcom 2. I played the game constantly in the arcade (remember what those were?) and I've whipped many a chump out of their hard earned quarters with the surprisingly simple Ryu, Akuma, Morrigan combo. So I was pretty excited for Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of two Worlds and purchased it in kind. But if there is anything Capcom loves to do, its to rehash the shit out of a game they're released instead of just making a new one. And MVC3 was no exception. I said I wasn't going to buy this, but a combo of peer pressure and trade value drove me to update to....

ULTIMATE MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3: (XB360/PS3)

Essentially, this review can double up for both Marvel vs. Capcom 3 games as functionally they are identical between to the two, sans the addition of the 12 extra characters. I usually start off my reviews with a brief summary of the plot or story, but as is with most fighting games, there really isn't one. Essentially to get any kind of story in this game you have to complete the arcade mode, and the character you land last blow to the final boss with the ending vignette you receive. If you played the first MVC3, none of the ending have changed for the current remaining characters. But its still fun to see some of the crossovers. One of my favorites was She-Hulk's, A character I don't really use, but in her ending she presides over a trial with Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright (now playable). It made me laugh.

It was hilarious at the time, little did I know Phoenix would become playable

One of the biggest complaints surrounding this game is that the controls were "Dumbed Down". If I am remembering right, MVC2 didn't use the Street Fighter control scheme either. The Street Fighter franchise typically used three punch and three kick buttons with a light medium and heavy power. In MVC2 the reduced it 4 buttons and two assist buttons. MVC3 has done away with the punch and kick buttons to make way for a light, Medium, Heavy, and launch button in addition to the assists. This takes out the need to hit strong punch or kick for certain moves. For most of the characters, this doesn't change how their specific move sets play. If anything, its made using people like Akuma more fluid for me. Sure it takes away some of the complexity of the game but it still has some of the other control aspects like the advancing guard, air combos, and tag attacks. many people see this as a detriment, I personally had no issue with it.

There really isn't much variance in the play modes of the game. You have your standard arcade mode, where you just play 8 or 9 fights to the last boss. You have a training mode to play around in and a mission mode to try to learn specific combos. When you beat the game you unlock the ending and soundtrack to the character you won with. But unlike the original MVC3, there are no characters to unlock. I personally have never been a fan of this because it gives the player very little incentive to play by them self they do not have anything to earn by doing it. Then we have the online mode, its basically the same as the Verses mode you can play with a friend at home, but with more lag, people interrupting your arcade mode,  and people quitting if you are too good.

The last thing I guess I should address is the characters as well. On the Marvel side they added: Nova, Rocket Raccoon, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, Dr. Strange, and Ghost Rider. I have heard of 2 or 3 of these guys tops. None of them really made me go ape shit to play as any of them and I've yet to use them for any major length of time. On the Capcom side they added: Strider, Firebrand, Phoenix Wright, Frank West, The Nemesis, and Virgil. Now this line up was pretty stoke about since only one of them I'm pretty unfamiliar with and i never used  anyways (Strider).  While I love the addition of these characters, some of them just don't make sense to use. Phoenix Wright is nothing short of hilarious because none of his attacks are actually attacks. He has a very short range and requires you finding 3 pieces of evidence and hitting them with an objection before you really unlock some of his bigger moves. Frank West, the character I wanted most, as lots of different moves that change as he levels during the match, but you have to hit the camera snap at the right moments to go up a level and for me its been pretty difficult to hit. People like Firebrand, Nemesis and Virgil mesh with this game perfectly though, and combo together very well.

Virgil may be a bad ass, but I call bullshit: Nobody messes the Nemesis up.

Its difficult to rate a game like this because I begin to question their relevance. With online gaming taking a front seat these days in the development of gaming, the one on one fighters seem like a natural fit. But when I play the game online, it doesn't feel as satisfying. I don't get any real enjoyment out of seeing a number next to me name informing me that there's about 1.8 million other assholes who are better than me at the game. It pretty much feels like I am playing the game in the single player mode. Less so in fact because at least in single player mode I can unlock an ending when I win 8 times, I don't get lag from the arcade mode, or have people drop out of the game just as I am about to win. But just as I go to say that you probably could skip out on getting a game like this, I go to a fight night with some friends where we are all playing in the same room. Now the games are tense, heart rate jumps up. I can hear cheering or AWWWS when close match finishes. WAY more fun that playing the game solo. This is why they make games like these, the are intended to be played in a group that's what makes them fun.

But in this same fight night, I realized something. There are two types of people who play games like this. People like me, who find some characters they like learn some core moves and develop a strategy. Plays the game, has fun with it, and generally enjoys it. Then there is the "Other guy". You know that guy. Has one character he never deviates from. Learns their entire move set. Learns everyone Else's move set. Knows you are going to throw that Hadouken and is going roll forward MP at the 5th frame of the animation which will counter your move, bounce you up and then allow him to string together an air juggle that will deplete an entire life bar. We did a tournament at the fight night and a lot of the games were very close. But this one guy would just participate on another level. I refuse to use the word play. Because that kind of person doesn't play the game, they study it, make it a chore. The execute the game. Personally, I think if you are playing the game that way then you are missing the whole point. Unless you are professional or competitive gamer, you're just a prick to everyone else you are playing with.

I suppose I could give the game a recommendation if you are a fan of fighting games, fan of the series, or just have a number of people over to game on a fairly frequent basis. The fights are fast, flashy, and easy to pick up and play. It's a fairly competent fighting game and it definitely works in a groups setting but unless you are one of "those guys" I can't imagine you will keep playing it after a few weeks. I just rather that Capcom would have waited another few months and put all the characters in the first time instead of charging me an extra 40 bucks for it.

Pricks.